Team Quest in China

A couple of Team Quests fighters are in Xian, China, teaching wrestling and BJJ to aspiring Chinese MMA fighters. Sherdog is hosting a blog (parts 1, 2, 3) written by those trainers and some of the Chinese fighters.

Most of the rising MMA fighters from China are former sanda champions. One of them, the author of the first part of the series, says:

I’ve been learning jiu-jitsu under Ruy Menezes at China Top Team for the past two years and I think this will be a great addition to my game. I hear that American MMA is dominated by wrestling; they haven’t seen Chinese sanda yet.

One of the Team Quest trainers:

One of the most interesting things I have seen is Na Shun -- a sanda coach here and a former sanda champion who competed against Cung Le years ago -- is rolling with us every day. I tried to wrestle him yesterday and it was like going up against a tree.

(Na Shun was a Mongolian wrestling champion before he started to fight sanda)

As for what they're training:

We’re working with the national sanda team, helping them with their wrestling and ground game. Sanda is the same style that most people in the states would know as sanshou. They have incredible striking and many of the more advanced sanda fighters have a little MMA experience.

The majority of the sanda fighters have great hips because of the upper-body throws in their sport. In training, I’ve been focusing on leg takedowns, getting out from the bottom and standing guard passes.

Definitely worth following the blog if one is interested in the development of MMA in China.

“Most people do not do, but take refuge in theory and talk, thinking that they will become good in this way” -- Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, II.4